


we'll save each other (over and over)

by mabi_lune



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Everyone is precious and cute and sad, Jon tries his best to help, M/M, and succeeds at being awkward, canon asexual jon, character study-ish??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:13:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21675055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mabi_lune/pseuds/mabi_lune
Summary: When Jon drags Martin out of the Lonely, they both think that they should be better at this whole rescuing business by now. After all, this isn’t the first time they’ve been each other’s savior.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 14
Kudos: 101





	we'll save each other (over and over)

**Author's Note:**

> I have a bad cold and needed to write something cute to make me feel better >.<

When Jon drags Martin out of the Lonely, they both think that they should be better at this whole rescuing business by now. After all, this isn’t the first time they’ve been each other’s savior. 

Jon thinks that Martin was more adept at the act of saving from the start. He’d been doing it ever since he began to work for the Magnus Institute really. Rescue, back then, was found in smaller, more mundane gestures, but they had meant just as much to Jon. Although he’d like to think that he had fallen into the role of Head Archivist as though he had always been meant for it, truth was that Jon had thought he might quit that very first year. Anxiety clenched around his heart when he saw the piles of disorganized statements dispersed all around the room which really had no right to be referred to by a name so grandiose as ‘Archives’. He ate little that first year, and slept less. Out of pride, he’d done his best to hide his exhaustion and stress under a façade of cynicism and arrogance. But Martin had seen right through it. 

He’d taken note of the circles under Jon’s eyes, of the way his voice trembled and softened when he read statements thinking no one was around to hear, of the way he looked down when Elias came to check in on their work. Martin had decided that if no one was going to stop Jon from killing himself with work, then he would. Tea had simply seemed like the easiest way to go about it. Some days, just one cup would be enough. Martin would bring it over to Jon who would make a show of begrudgingly accepting it and telling him to get back to work, and then Martin would see his shoulders drop and his breath slow as his fingers reached around the mug. Sometimes it took more than a cup to steal the anxiety away. Martin didn’t mind. When Jon looked particularly weak, he stayed behind to make sure the cups of tea could help him through the night. Jon would obviously have never admitted it back then, but knowing that Martin was there and worrying over him calmed him more than any cup of tea ever would. 

Jon was more awkward with his attempts to help. And initially that hadn’t mattered to him. Martin was his assistant, and nowhere did Jon’s job description say that he had to have more than a strictly professional relationship with his staff. In those first few months, Jon had, truth be told, paid very little attention to his assistant, and when he had, it was only to reprimand Martin for poorly carrying out his research. But somewhere in between the cups of tea Martin ceaselessly delivered to him, Jon had started to care, just a little bit. The feeling wasn’t the most pleasant.

Jon felt a twinge of concern whenever Martin returned to the Archives after the weekend. He always looked so… hurt, and sad, and utterly unlike himself. Jon had gathered, from some not-so-discreet questions to Sasha and Tim, that on Sundays Martin went to see his mother. Neither of his assistants could provide much in the way of details as Martin did not talk about it, but clearly these visits were never a nice experience. Jon wasn’t too sure where this protectiveness had come from, but once it was there he couldn’t help but worry about the man. Thus followed a series of attempts to rescue Martin from the fog he was in on those days. The first few tries were disastrously unsuccessful. Giving him more work so that he had something else to focus on had only made him more quiet, had only seemed to add the burden that weighed him down. Offering to let Martin take the morning off had gone even worse. It had prompted something very close to anger in Martin, and he had almost been shaking when he asked Jon if he wanted to get rid of him, and told him that if he did, then he should just be clear about it. Tim had rolled his eyes at the confrontation, while Sasha had come to see Jon afterwards and chuckled as she told him to ‘maybe try again’. And Jon had, and he had eventually figured out how to help (or at least how to do the least damage). When Martin looked particularly down, Jon would try to find some task that he could ask Martin to help him with. He made sure that it was never anything too difficult, and always something that they could do together. That was how they had spent many Mondays together re-arranging the files room, or digging through boxes of statements to find a specific one they needed, or trying (for the tenth time) to record statements digitally onto Jon’s computer. It wasn’t a foolproof solution, and sometimes it wasn’t quite enough to help Martin, but it was enough for Jon that on some days, he started smiling again over the course of the afternoon, or talking about his poetry, or chatting to Tim and Sasha excitedly. Martin figured out what Jon was doing after three consecutive Mondays of filing old statements with him. He never complained though (and decided that perhaps Mondays weren’t so terrible). 

But sometimes rescue took more than a cup of tea, more than company on difficult days. And sometimes rescue wasn’t rescue. Sometimes things didn’t work out and it was too late for anything like saving. Sometimes it wasn’t about pulling the other out of danger but helping each other pull themselves back together.

When it was too late for proper rescue, rescue was this: Jon offering to walk Martin home every day after Prentiss’ invasion, Martin breathing with Jon through his panic attacks, Jon draping a blanket over Martin when it got too dark to go home, or Martin putting ointment on Jon’s desk when he arrived at work with burns on his hand. 

Wordlessly, they had both decided that if they couldn’t stop the monsters from sinking their claws into the other, they could at least make sure that they stopped each other from bleeding out.

And today, they think as they step out of the Lonely, _today, that sort of saving is enough_.

More than enough.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back! Started this one a while ago but never finished it so decided it was time! 
> 
> Please let me know what you think, your comments actually make my day every time <3


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